Everywhere you go

All this week, temperatures in the 60's. Can I get an amen?

***

I'm suddenly seized by business. Getting manuscripts out in the mail is, for me, like digging a tunnel with a spoon. But not a regular soup spoon. No, a Barbie spoon. And that makes for slow going, my friends.

When your hands and arms don't work, when you're me, typing, writing, these things are in no way impeded by my disability.

But when it's time for the words to be birthed into the physical world, to appear on crisp, 24 lb. paper, I begin to hate all those sheets just a little bit.

It's one reason why I post new poems here. It takes the place of printing them out.

God help when I'm dealing with 60 pages by myself. Moving them around with a mouthstick that's probably twelve inches in length with a rubber tip at its end can be tedious. Not really challenging, though, as I've figured out, in these twenty years almost, how to make do. For example, I accidentally printed out a copy of my manuscript in reverse the other day, last page first and so on. It probably took me an hour to flip the pages in the right order.

Then there's the collating, clipping, stapling, addressing, stamping, stuffing, sealing, taping. I'm probably leaving something out. All of that is mostly beyond me. So I have to have somebody else do that for me. These days for me somebody's are in short supply.

I'm not complaining, though. There's an excitement in beginning again, corresponding with editors, mailing, rinse, repeat.

***

I didn't mean to steal any of Laurel's thunder (as if I could!) by posting the Meacham line-up before she had herself announced it. My bad. Sorry, Laurel.

***

Making plans to read here on March 23rd with this evildoer.